When I started putting together Speaking of Radial Tires, a few things started to unravel—my tears, my past, and my unacknowledged mental health struggles.
My depression and mania, long undiagnosed, wreaked havoc in my life, shaping who I was in ways I didn’t fully understand. As I revisited my experiences through both writing and photography, I realized that healing begins with the uncomfortable act of confronting our own stories.
At first, I resisted. I didn’t want to put everything out there. I feared that my past choices, born from mental illness, would forever color how people saw me. I was destined to be "crazy amy". But as I dug deeper, I came to see that shame, when faced head-on, holds transformative power. What once felt like flaws or failures where survival strategies, and my labels became my superpowers.
Every word & photograph captures a piece of that emotional landscape—moments of clarity, chaos, and the fragile beauty that emerges when we embrace our imperfections.
